The cycle between work and the dole is trapping millions in poverty

It’s important that in-work poverty is now firmly on the agenda. Research by the New Policy Institute for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation shows that, for the first time, more working families are in poverty than people in workless and retired families combined (52 per cent compared to 48 per cent).

But we must not lose sight of the fact that those in poverty, whether in work or out of work, are often the same people churning from low-paid, insecure and part-time employment to unemployment, and back again.

The reality is that the churn in and out of work, due to the economic climate, has never been larger and that people are constantly moving in and out of employment. It would be careless to talk about two distinct groups of people – those who work and those who do not. That would be easy. In reality, the situation is far more complicated. Between April 2011 and April 2013, 4.8 million different adults claimed Jobseeker's Allowance: one in six of the workforce, two-fifths of whom had never previously claimed.

There is good news, though. The number of workless households is at its lowest level since 1996, when the data series started. Only a small minority of these workless households are ones where no adult has ever worked (8 per cent, or 1.5 per cent of all households). And the proportion of households who experience worklessness in a given year has generally been falling since 1996, from around 21 per cent (with 1 per cent never having worked). There was a rise in 2009 as the recession began, but now it is decreasing.

This fall cannot be attributed solely to an increase in employment, as it also reflects changing household formation. There has been a large increase in the number of young adults living with their parents. Households where no adult has ever worked are likely to contain much younger people. More than half of those in never-worked households are under 25, compared to only 13 per cent in currently workless households. Almost half (48 per cent) living in households where no one has ever worked are students.

As George Osborne said in the Autumn Statement, the labour market appears to be improving at last. Unemployment and underemployment have stopped rising and workless households have decreased. This good news masks the fact that when people do get into work, they are more likely to be paid below the Living Wage (as five million people are) and millions are trapped between poorly paid, insecure jobs and unemployment.

But the insecurity faced by people trying to get into and stay in work still remains a huge problem and is hindering attempts to reduce poverty. That insecurity means millions of people are stuck in a cycle – churning between work and the dole. It would be better if government policy and announcements reflected that.

Aleks Collingwood is Programme Manager for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation

Hannan Fodder: This week, Daniel Hannan gets his excuses in early

Since Daniel Hannan, a formerly obscure MEP, has emerged as the anointed intellectual of the Brexit elite, The Staggers is charting his ascendancy...

When I started this column, there were some nay-sayers talking Britain down by doubting that I was seriously going to write about Daniel Hannan every week. Surely no one could be that obsessed with the activities of one obscure MEP? And surely no politician could say enough ludicrous things to be worthy of such an obsession?

They were wrong, on both counts. Daniel and I are as one on this: Leave and Remain, working hand in glove to deliver on our shared national mission. There’s a lesson there for my fellow Remoaners, I’m sure.

Anyway. It’s week three, and just as I was worrying what I might write this week, Dan has ridden to the rescue by writing not one but two columns making the same argument – using, indeed, many of the exact same phrases (“not a club, but a protection racket”). Like all the most effective political campaigns, Dan has a message of the week.

First up, on Monday, there was this headline, in the conservative American journal, the Washington Examiner:

“We will get a good deal – because rational self-interest will overcome the Eurocrats’ fury”

The message of the two columns is straightforward: cooler heads will prevail. Britain wants an amicable separation. The EU needs Britain’s military strength and budget contributions, and both sides want to keep the single market intact.

The Con Home piece makes the further argument that it’s only the Eurocrats who want to be hardline about this. National governments – who have to answer to actual electorates – will be more willing to negotiate.

And so, for all the bluster now, Theresa May and Donald Tusk will be skipping through a meadow, arm in arm, before the year is out.

Before we go any further, I have a confession: I found myself nodding along with some of this. Yes, of course it’s in nobody’s interests to create unnecessary enmity between Britain and the continent. Of course no one will want to crash the economy. Of course.

I’ve been told by friends on the centre-right that Hannan has a compelling, faintly hypnotic quality when he speaks and, in retrospect, this brief moment of finding myself half-agreeing with him scares the living shit out of me. So from this point on, I’d like everyone to keep an eye on me in case I start going weird, and to give me a sharp whack round the back of the head if you ever catch me starting a tweet with the word, “Friends-”.

Anyway. Shortly after reading things, reality began to dawn for me in a way it apparently hasn’t for Daniel Hannan, and I began cataloguing the ways in which his argument is stupid.

Problem number one: Remarkably for a man who’s been in the European Parliament for nearly two decades, he’s misunderstood the EU. He notes that “deeper integration can be more like a religious dogma than a political creed”, but entirely misses the reason for this. For many Europeans, especially those from countries which didn’t have as much fun in the Second World War as Britain did, the EU, for all its myriad flaws, is something to which they feel an emotional attachment: not their country, but not something entirely separate from it either.

Consequently, it’s neither a club, nor a “protection racket”: it’s more akin to a family. A rational and sensible Brexit will be difficult for the exact same reasons that so few divorcing couples rationally agree not to bother wasting money on lawyers: because the very act of leaving feels like a betrayal.

Problem number two: even if everyone was to negotiate purely in terms of rational interest, our interests are not the same. The over-riding goal of German policy for decades has been to hold the EU together, even if that creates other problems. (Exhibit A: Greece.) So there’s at least a chance that the German leadership will genuinely see deterring more departures as more important than mutual prosperity or a good relationship with Britain.

And France, whose presidential candidates are lining up to give Britain a kicking, is mysteriously not mentioned anywhere in either of Daniel’s columns, presumably because doing so would undermine his argument.

So – the list of priorities Hannan describes may look rational from a British perspective. Unfortunately, though, the people on the other side of the negotiating table won’t have a British perspective.

Problem number three is this line from the Con Home piece:

“Might it truly be more interested in deterring states from leaving than in promoting the welfare of its peoples? If so, there surely can be no further doubt that we were right to opt out.”

I could go on, about how there’s no reason to think that Daniel’s relatively gentle vision of Brexit is shared by Nigel Farage, UKIP, or a significant number of those who voted Leave. Or about the polls which show that, far from the EU’s response to the referendum pushing more European nations towards the door, support for the union has actually spiked since the referendum – that Britain has become not a beacon of hope but a cautionary tale.

But I’m running out of words, and there’ll be other chances to explore such things. So instead I’m going to end on this:

Hannan’s argument – that only an irrational Europe would not deliver a good Brexit – is remarkably, parodically self-serving. It allows him to believe that, if Brexit goes horribly wrong, well, it must all be the fault of those inflexible Eurocrats, mustn’t it? It can’t possibly be because Brexit was a bad idea in the first place, or because liberal Leavers used nasty, populist ones to achieve their goals.

Read today, there are elements of Hannan’s columns that are compelling, even persuasive. From the perspective of 2020, I fear, they might simply read like one long explanation of why nothing that has happened since will have been his fault.

Jonn Elledge is the editor of the New Statesman's sister site CityMetric. He is on Twitter, far too much, as @JonnElledge.